Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories Part 14

"Do you know his name?" I inquired of the police officer.

"They used to call him Danish Bill," he answered. "Have known him for a good while. Believe his real name was Danborg, or Dan--something."

"Not Dannevig?" I cried.

"Dannevig? Yes, I guess you have got it."

I hastily approached the table. There lay Dannevig--but I would rather not describe him. It was hard to believe it, but this heavy-lidded, coa.r.s.e-skinned, red-veined countenance bore a cruel, caricatured resemblance to the clean-cut, exquisitely modelled face of the man I had once called my friend. A death-like stupor rested upon his features; his eyes were closed, but his mouth half open.

"By Jove!" exclaimed the physician, in a burst of professional enthusiasm, "what a splendid animal he must have been! Hardly saw a better made man in all my life."

"But he is not dead!" I protested, somewhat anxiously.

"No; but he has no chance, that I can see. May last over to-morrow, but hardly longer. Does any one know where he lodges?"

No one answered.

"But, _Himmel_! he cannot stay here." The voice was the bartender's, but it seemed to be addressed to no one in particular.

"I have known him for years," I said. "Take him to my rooms; they are only a dozen blocks away."

A carriage was sent for, and away we drove, the doctor and I, slowly, cautiously, holding the still unconscious man between us. We laid him on my bed, and the doctor departed, promising to return before morning.

A little after midnight Dannevig became restless, and as I went to his side, opened his eyes with a look of full, startled consciousness.

"I'm about played out, old fellow, aint I?" he groaned.

I motioned to him to be silent.

"No," he went on, in a strained whisper, "it is no use now. I know well enough how I stand. You needn't try to fool me."

He lay for a while motionless, while his eyes wandered restlessly about the room. He made an effort to speak, but his words were inaudible. I stooped over him, laying my ear to his mouth.

"Can--can you lend me five dollars?"

I nodded.

"You will find--a p.a.w.nbroker's check--in my vest pocket," he continued. "The address is--is--on it. Redeem it. It is a ring. Send it--to--to the Countess von Brehm--with--with--my compliments," he finished with a groan.

We spent several hours in silence. About three o'clock the doctor paid a brief visit; and I read in his face that the end was near. The first sunbeams stole through the closed shutters and scattered little quivering fragments of light upon the carpet. A deep stillness reigned about us. As I sat watching the defaced ruin of what had been, to me at least, one of the n.o.blest forms which a human spirit ever inhabited, the past moved in a vivid retrospect before my eye, and many strange reflections thronged upon me. Presently Dannevig called me and I stood again bowing over him.

"When you--bury me," he said in a broken whisper. "Carry my--cross of--Dannebrog--on a cus.h.i.+on after me." And again after a moment's pause: "I have--made a--nice mess of it, haven t I? I--I--think it would--have--have been better for--me, if--I had been--somebody else."

Within an hour he was dead. Myself and two policemen followed him to the grave; and the cross of Dannebrog, with a much soiled red ribbon, was carried on a velvet cus.h.i.+on after his coffin.

MABEL AND I.

(A PHILOSOPHICAL FAIRY TALE.)

I.

"I want to see things as they are," said I to Mabel.

"I don't see how else you can see them," answered Mabel, with a laugh.

"You certainly don't see them as they are not."

"Yes, I do," said I. "I see men and things only as they _seem_. It is so exasperating to think that I can never get beyond the surface of anything. My friends may appear very good and beautiful to me, and yet I may all the while have a suspicion that the appearance is deceitful, that they are really neither good nor beautiful."

"In case that was so, I shouldn't want to know it," said Mabel. "It would make me very unhappy."

"That is where you and I differ," said I.

Mabel was silent for a moment, and I believe she was a little hurt, for I had spoken rather sharply.

"But what good would it do you, Jamie?" asked she, looking up at me from under her wide-brimmed straw hat.

"What would do me good?" said I, for I had quite forgotten what we had been talking about.

"To see things as they are. There is my father now; he knows a great deal, and I am sure I shouldn't care to know any more than he does."

"Well, that is where you and I differ," said I again.

"I wish you wouldn't be always saying 'that is where you and I differ.' Somehow I don't like to hear you say it. It doesn't sound like yourself."

And Mabel turned away from me, took up a leaf from the ground and began to pick it to pieces.

We were sitting, at the time when this conversation took place, up in the gorge not half a mile from the house where Mabel's father lived. I was a tutor in the college, about twenty-three years old, and I was very fond of German philosophy. And now, since I have told who I was, I suppose I ought to tell you something about Mabel. Mabel was,--but really it is impossible to say what she was, except that she was very, very charming. As for the rest, she was the daughter of Professor Markham, and I had known her since my college days when she was quite a little girl. And now she wore long dresses; and, what was more, she had her hair done up in a sort of Egyptian pyramid on the top of her head. The dress she had on to-day I was particularly fond of; it was of a fine light texture, and the pattern was an endless repet.i.tion of a small, sweet-brier bud, with two delicate green leaves attached to it.

I had spread a shawl out on the ground where Mabel was sitting, for fear she should soil her fine dress. A large weeping-willow spread its branches all around us, and drooped until it almost touched the ground, so that it made a sort of green, sunlit summer-house, for Mabel and me to live in. Between the rocks at our feet a clear brook came rus.h.i.+ng down, throwing before it little showers of spray, which fell like crystal pearls on the water, sailed down the swift eddies and then vanished in the next whirlpool. A couple of orioles in brand-new yellow uniforms, with black epaulets on their shoulders, were busy in the tree over our heads, but stopped now and then in their work to refresh themselves with a little impromptu duet.

"Work and play Make glad the day,"--

that seemed to be their philosophy, and Mabel and I were quite ready to agree with them, although we had been idling since the early dawn.

But then it was so long since we had seen each other, that we thought we could afford it.

"Somehow," said Mabel at last (for she never could pout long at a time), "I don't like you so well since you came back from Germany. You are not as nice as you used to be. What did you go there for, anyway?"

"Why," I responded, quite seriously, "I went there to study; and I did learn a good deal there, although naturally I was not as industrious as I might have been."

"I can readily believe that. But, tell me, what did you learn that you mightn't just as well have learned at home?"

I thought it was no use in being serious any longer; so I tossed a pebble into the water, glanced up into Mabel's face and answered gayly: